Ac 1.1

• Creating new laws for protests

  1. Government sets out reasons

  2. First reading

  3. Second reading debate on general principles

  4. Committee Stage, MPs/House of Lords look at bill in detail

  5. Report stage bill moves to whole house, committee reports on changes it's made

  6. Third reading House of Commons take a vote on final version of bill

  7. House of Lords bill examined in the same way as House of Commons

  8. Amendments considered, any amendments made to the bill must be sent back to the House of Commons if no amendments moves to next stage

  9. Royal Assent bill goes to the monarch to be signed
• Black's definition of Precedens as a 'rule of law established for the first time by a Court for a Particular type of Case and thereafter refered to in deciding in Simmilor Cases

  Simple definition Past descisions of a judge Create laws for future judges to follow. Descision made by higher Cours creates binding precedent for lower Coucts to follow

  2times its not done

  distinguishing, When the facts are different enough to allow Judge to reach a different decision and not follow ruling

  • Over-rulling, when a Court higher up States a legal descision made earlier is wrong and overturns it
• Statutory interpretation

  literal rule - Judges use the ordinary meaning for the word However an issue is that it Can have Several different meanings in the dictionary (r v margins)
• Statutory interpretation

  Golden rule-literal rue can lead to an absurd result so golden rule allows Court to modify the literal meaning (Adler v george)
• Statutory interpretation

  mischief rule-allows court to enforce what the Statute intended to achieve ratter than what the Words say (Corkey v Carpenter)
• Government processes


  First reading name of bill and main aims read out, formal vote is taken

  • Second reading debate on general principles and another vote
  • Committee Stage, MPs/House of Lords look at bill in detail to address any issues and possible changes
  • Report stage bill moves to whole house to consider committee report and vote on any amendments they wish make to bill
  • Third reading House of Commons take a vote on final version of bill
• Government processes

  House of Lords bill examined in the same way as House of Commons

  • Amendments considered, any amendments made to the bill must be sent back to the House of Commons if no amendments moves to next stage
  • Royal Assent bill goes to the monarch to be signed
  • New law will now come into force immediately, act specifies that it will only apply from some later date (commencement order)
• House of Lords


  Called peers, there’s about 800

  • contains hereditary peers whose families are born laws as well as individuals we’ve been appointed Lords i.e. Lord sugar
  • They act to doublecheck on new laws
• House of commons

  Made up of the elected representatives of the people, 650 members of Parliament

  • each MP is elected at a general election to represent a constituency
• The government

  Job is to run the country,

  • formed by the political party that has the majority of the 650 MPs.
  • Prime minister is the leader of the majority party.
  • Most proposals for new law come from the government. A bill must be agree by both houses in Parliament and receive Royal ascent before they can become active parliament.
• To create new law, it starts with

  Green paper- an internal report provoke public discussion of the subject, often includes questions for the interested individuals and organisations to respond to

  • White paper- after the consultation government publishes a white paper which is a document setting out their detail plans for legislation. Includes a draft version of the building intend to put before parliament.
• examples of criminal statutes

  The crime (sentences) act 1997- introduced mandatory minimum sentences for a range of repeat offences, such as an automatic life sentence for a second serious sexual violent offence

  • The criminal justice act 2003- introduced a change to the double Jeopardy law following Ann Mings successful campaign and the recommendations of the McPherson report on the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The killer of Anne Ming’s daughter and one of the suspects in the killing of Stephen Lawrence to be tried for a second time